@ xenial:-
Easy-peasy. Try it this way:-
Navigate to /root/my-applications/bin. Right-click in an empty part of the window->New->Script. A small 'action' window pops-up asking you to 'Create', so just give your script a name.....in your case, 'Firefox', and hit 'Create'. Your named script will now appear in the main window.
Now; right-click->Open with Geany (or Open as text). Geany should open with
....already showing, in red. (Red indicates these are 'commented-out' lines; the '#' symbol at the beginning of a line makes it 'inactive'). Simply add the following:-
If in /opt, this would read
So the final script then looks like this:-
With me so far?
Okay. Now, drag the new script across to the desktop, and drop it. This is now 'linked' to the script you've just created in /root/my-applications/bin.
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For an icon:-
Download the attached icon (right-click->Save as). I
know it looks a hell of a lot bigger than what you want, but ROX auto-sizes icons down to 48 x 48 for the 'pinboard' (desktop); I always find a larger icon looks sharper and better defined after ROX has reduced it. Put it in /usr/share/pixmaps, and leave this window open.
(This is the slightly older, "early" Quantum icon. But I think it looks neater, somehow.....to my way of thinking, the present FF icon looks kinda
, TBH..!)
Right-click the new desktop script-link. Select File 'firefox'->Set icon. A small window appears, with a space to drop an icon into. Select the Firefox icon from the /usr/share/pixmaps window, drag it across and drop it into the space.
Bingo! You should now have an icon on your desktop which, when you click on it, will launch Firefox. And this trick can be used for any application.
BTW:- The reason Mikeslr's desktop entry didn't work for you could be because you put the full-stop at the end? You don't want that, since a full-stop is interpreted by Bash to mean something else..... Either that, or you forgot to put the leading "/" in front of 'opt'.....
The 'Exec' line must read
exactly as follows:-
Exec=apulse /opt/firefox/firefox
And the above all assumes that you have indeed placed the firefox directory in /opt to begin with. Let us know if that helps, please.
Mike.